16 Questions to Ask Before Hiring Magento Developers

What are the requirements for your organization to hire Magento developers? It’s quite a big decision, one that can impact your Magento store and your business model. Thus, you need to utilize your time and recruit a Magento developer who can embrace modern techniques to build user-centric designs to increase your online store sales. 

Magento helps businesses to develop its eCommerce platform’s architecture, flexibility, scalability, and security features. The platform is entirely customizable and thus needs the attention of a skilled, professional, and experienced Magento developer. 

Also, as per a guide released by Magento.com, more than a quarter-million website owners use Magento and this number is likely to increase in the coming years. Thus the need for hiring skilled Magneto developers will soar. 

A dedicated Magento developer will create a website, keeping your business goal and your customer’s needs in mind. They will make buying decisions easy for your consumer by creating an appealing eCommerce platform.

Moreover, owing to their huge demand in the market, salaries have increased 5.6% on a year-over-year basis for Magento developers. 

In this blog, we will discuss:

• Why should you hire Magento developers?
• Questions you must ask before hiring Magento developers for your company  

So let’s start with why you should hire Magento developers.

Why Hire Magento Developers?

The world has only about 200,000 Magento developers globally. That’s how niche the market of Magento is which makes it more in-demand by website development companies. 

So you must hire Magento developers as your front-end and back-end developers to give an artistic look to your website. Other than that, they should be able to implement minor SEO practices, integrate third-party plug-ins and Magento extensions to upscale your business. 

Here is another list of reasons you should hire Magento developers:

• Make sure the web store is well-designed and can be adapted across various devices  
• Developing a website using HTML markup language
• Creating a user-friendly experience with stunning visuals
• Checking and fixing bugs before launching websites
• Keeping your Magento website updated with the latest technology stack and trends
• Expanding library development projects for your websites
• Enhancing the security of the Magento website
• Designing new features to meet the business goals and requirements of your eCommerce platform

So now you know some of the key reasons you must adopt Magento developers for your eCommerce Magento store.

Now let’s look at some of the questions you should ask your Magento developers before hiring them for your enterprise. 

Questions to Ask Magento Developers Before Hiring

Here is a list of Magento developers hiring questions you must ask when hiring a Magento developer to build a scalable, reliable, developed, well-documented eCommerce platform to grow your business and ROI. 

With these questions, you can hire a dedicated Magento developer for your Magento store and upscale your business, its designs, features, functionalities, page loading time, and more.  

Below is a list of some questions that you must ask to hire a Magento developer that can meet your business need and fulfill your business goals:

1. What Magento certifications do you hold?

Before recruiting a Magento developer for your project, ask them to validate or prove their skills. You might be tempted to buy their experience story, but a Magento certification will help you figure out their professional qualification and approach.

An experienced Magento developer will always get their skills validated in the professional world through a Magento certification. A certified Magento developer will have a better chance at recruitment and an edge over their competition. 

Their Magento credentials can ensure that you hire a skilled, dedicated, professional, and sincere Magento developer. So, make sure to seek Magento 2 Certified Professional Front End Developers, who have the skills and knowledge to create a user-friendly interface using Magento’s theme components.

2. What has been your experience with the Magento platform?

Experience helps a Magento developer gain expertise in a particular domain. So when hiring your Magento developer, see how experienced they are. Taking a look at their expertise will assure you about their skills, capabilities, protocols, development processes, and deadlines.

If you go for a fresher, you need to train them about business processes and protocols. Then, you need to guide them to make a Magento developer that fits your business and can help you meet your vision of a customized Magento store.  

Whereas if you hire an experienced Magento developer, they can help you make the best possible decisions for your business. They will analyze your platform and use insights to make your Magento store rich with function and features.

3. What tools do you use for your Magento development project?

You must ask your Magento developer about the tools they will use to build and manage your Magento store. Check whether they have the required technical knowledge or not. 

Ask them about setting up a particular Magento tool for your store and how they will use it to make your Magento store more robust. Question them about their ability to use Magento tools like:

• Magento PHPUnit Integration
• Magento Debug
• MageTool
• PHPStorm
• Xdebug and more 

Also, check on their knowledge of the latest trends and technologies in building a fully scalable and reliable Magento store. See if they use agile technologies to optimize your Magento platforms.

4. What other sites have you developed similar to mine?

While searching for a suitable Magento developer, ask them:

• If they have prior experience in the same industry?
• Or do they have the exposure of migrating any website to Magento?

If the answer is yes, that could be the X factor you are looking for in your Magento developer. How?

Suppose you are an electronics supplier and need some out-of-box customization to improve your Magento store’s productivity, interface, and ROI. Suppose your Magento developer has experience working in the same industry as yours. In that case, they may have an idea or functionality that can be added to your store and benefit your business. 

Therefore, hiring an experienced and skilled Magento developer in the related sector can help you save several hours of research and development of your Magento store. 

5. What is your process for quality assurance and testing?

Magento developers are responsible for preventing mistakes and defects when providing solutions or services to your eCommerce Magento store. In addition, the developers help you test and assure you of the quality of your online store and help you meet the market standards to accomplish your business goals.

A responsible Magento developer will have a set process to test the quality of your Magento store. You should ask them how they test and QA their software on paper or in a flow chart. You’re in luck if they give you one right away. 

QA Test goes beyond finding bugs and doing simple tests – it is about:

• Preventing defects
• Assuring high-quality development processes
• Providing stability 
• Offering consistency to your Magento store  

So hire a Magento developer who understands writing error-free codes that offer the best user experience to your audience and keep your database secure from hackers, viruses, and more.

6. Are you currently working on any Magento 2 projects?

Do ask your potential Magento developer whether they have work experience in Magento 2 projects. If yes, further ask if: they have any Magento 2 projects live and share the work?

If they do share their work with you:

• Assess it
• Check their credibility
• Run quality tests on their user interface
• Learn more about their features, designs, functionality
• Ask for third-party integrations
• Evaluate the security parameters they have taken care of

If they don’t share their work, ask them for particular case studies. Then, a reliable Magento developer will have access to it.

Also, ask them whether they know how to migrate Magento 1 sites to Magento 2. If they do, it will only add up to their credibility and make them a top-notch contender for the job in your organization.  

You can hop on to the next question as soon as you are satisfied with the quality of their work! If not, you should still go forward with the interview, and maybe their USP lies in your next question.  

7. Are you an official Magento partner?

If you are planning to take your Magento eCommerce website to the next level, it will turn out to be beneficial if you seek the help of an official Magento Partner. So when you next interview a Magento agency, do ask this question if they are an official Magento partner. 

Magento partners are the recognized Magento agencies that have earned their name by offering outstanding Magento eCommerce development services using their innovation strategies, product development creativity, and excellent user-friendly feature implementation. 

Certified Magento Partners offer many benefits over other agencies, such as:

• Magento’s Support Team is available to them directly
• Codes and software for several Magento codes are readily available 
• The team has obtained detailed product and onsite training 
• They follow a faster communication method

So, ask which Magento Partnership program they have opted for and how it will benefit your business model.

8. How often do you exceed your budget? Do you have a variance between estimated and actual working hours?

Budgetary constraints are significant for any project that is supposed to go live in the business world. Therefore, you need to ask your Magento store developer how much your budget will differ from the one set in advance.

Most of the time, due to several added levels of customization, incorporation of different themes and Magento extensions, or unexpected bugs or coding errors, the working hours can become longer than expected. In that case, if the developers say that the hours can slightly increase, you need to be open for that in advance, 

Also, check if the developer uses agile working practices. Ask your Magento developer to:

• Set a thorough discovery process
• Do detailed scoping
• Analyze your weekly reports

This will enable you to lower the variance, thereby saving your costs. 

9. What’s your development process, and how long does it take?

Always ask your potential Magento developer about their development process and its duration to complete the task. To ensure the success of an online store, the developer must have documented the process, and you ask for it. By this, you can be sure of the services offered by your developer with a clear timeline of events. 

With a clear timeline in hand, you can analyze which areas will be taking most of your effort and time. By having a dedicated Magento developer, you can get a detailed description of the development process of your Magento store and have some buffer time in hand for last-minute changes.

These last-minute changes include the latest Magento patches, features of any business process, accommodating security patches, fixing bugs, and more. 

10. How long does it usually take you to respond? How can I reach you?

Nothing is more frustrating than working with a Magento developer who is either unavailable when you need them or cannot accommodate your request. Running an online eCommerce store is already challenging, and having delays in handling issues leaves resentment in customers. It also leaves a harmful impact on your site and business.   

Thus, it is imperative to hire a dedicated Magento developer to improve the productivity of your website and generate more revenue for your business. So whenever you are recruiting a new Magento developer or outsourcing your project to a Magento development company, ask them how much time it will take to respond to your text, call or message.  

Also, ask them to give you clear guidelines about contacting them in time of need. You can also email them general questions about the Magento store and see how quickly they respond to your requests.    

11. Have you created earlier samples of your work and demonstrated that you made it?

Whatever the Magento developer or the Magento agency says about themselves, the only way to check their credibility is by checking their work portfolio and examples of previous Magento eCommerce projects. 

For this, do confirm if they have any existing portfolios and ask for client reviews and feedback. For instance, if they share with you an online grocery website that they have developed in the past, do ask the following questions to check the authenticity:

• What was the primary goal of creating the website
• What were the project highlights
• Which 3rd party integrations were installed
• What kind of navigation the website offer – was it a flyout menu? 
• What were the final solutions provided?
• Any testimonials that the Magento developer has for the said project? 

If the developers answer these questions, they indeed have past work experience, and you can move ahead with them if the rest of the parameters line up. 

12. What documentation and technical support do you provide?

Inquire about the documentation and technical support that your Magento developers will provide for your eCommerce store. You should ask your developers to create multi-faceted documentation of the eCommerce website that displays data, usernames, and passwords. 

Through documentation, you can gather all the information you need for future customizations via Magento experts.

Also, ask your future Magento developer about the technical support they will provide to keep your websites live. The technical support will include:

• Solving speed related issues
• Adding missing features and functionalities to your eCommerce store
• Connecting third-party data sources and plug-ins to pull and push data

Before finalizing the deal, ensure post-development conditions are met, and talk to your developer about the level of support they can provide for your eCommerce store.

13. Do you have exposure to SEO?

You should check if your Magento developer is familiar with the latest SEO tactics if you want to ensure that your website meets all the SEO parameters and can rank higher on SERPs. 

When your website is live, you will have to run various contemporary SEO campaigns to boost the rankings. Also, essential SEO factors such as website optimization, site structure, and user experience will need special attention. Thus, if your Magento developers have some basic understanding of on-page SEO, the chances are high that your website will be SEO-friendly from day one. 

So, to check if your Magento developer has SEO exposure, you can consider asking the following questions:

• What are the inherent functions of SEO?
• Which SEO trends are currently trending?
• What is the Core Web Vital?

14. What’s your approach to following the design and responsiveness of the website?

A Magento developer is required to customize eye-catching designs from your home pages to all the other pages of your eCommerce store to attract more people to your business. Thus a Magento developer must know how to design a responsive website.

Therefore you should ask your Magento developer whether they know how to create a user-friendly interface with stunning designs or not. If so, you should hire them to construct appealing designs to reach more audiences with various features, shorter response times, and even less data consumption.

By hiring a proficient Magento developer, you can give your online eCommerce platform a Midas touch and outshine your competition. Through your eye-catching visuals, you can set a benchmark in the industry and continue to generate revenue for your business.

15. Do you know how to write a Magento 2 custom module?

The Magneto 2 custom module contains a set of blocks, controllers, and models to expand the platform’s functionality and add specific features to your Magento eCommerce store. The custom module is focused upon the backend services of the application and how well it functions. 

There are more than 180,000 websites running on Magento 2. So when hiring your Magento developer, ask them whether they know how to write code for the Magento 2 custom module. If you use a Magento 2 custom module, you can offer your users a fantastic shopping experience. 

It gives you a centralized module to control all your functions and processes. Also, ask them to tell you about the process of creating a Magento 2 custom module to make the admin interface intuitive and robust.  

16. What do you do to improve the performance of Magento 2?

To check the more profound knowledge of the prospective Magento developer, you can throw a question asking if they have worked on improving Magento 2 performance in the past. Suppose the Magento developer answers with a process that is inclined towards the following steps. In that case, the person sitting across the table has good knowledge of not only developing your website but also improving its efficiency:

• We inspect various third-party integrations
• Next, we check to see if full page caching has been enabled
• We recommend avoiding using JS bundling
• We enable CSS/JS minification
• We turn on the Production Mode if it’s turned off

Asking this question also lets you know how good your Magento developer is in conducting the website audit and what out-of-the-box things s/he can do to ensure that the website runs effectively.  

Conclusion: Is it Worth it to Hire Magento Developers?

Recruiting Magento developers is the beginning of your journey towards a successful eCommerce store. However, it is a crucial step as it will affect your business for a more extended time. An experienced Magento developer will always keep your business goals and demands high priority to creating your online store. 

Magento is a complicated platform, and it needs an expert Magento developer to manage all the complex coding, analyze the insights, document the whole process of creating a Magento platform, and utilize insights for the growth of the business. Hire the dedicated Magento developers from Hire Indian Programmers to perform all these functions and create a perfect Magento eCommerce store.

However, with this little guide, you can ask the questions for hiring your perfect Magento developer. Contact us now for more queries.

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